My guest on the show this week is Danny Lange, VP for Machine Learning & AI at video game technology developer Unity Technologies. Danny is well traveled in the world of ML and AI, and has had a hand in developing machine learning platforms at companies like Uber, Amazon and Microsoft. In this conversation we cover a bunch of topics, including How ML & AI are being used in gaming, the importance of reinforcement learning in the future of game development, the intersection between AI and AR/VR and the next steps in natural character interaction.

May 20th is the one year anniversary of This Week in Machine learning & AI. I started this podcast last year as a way to share what I was learning about the field, and to be quite honest, I really had no idea what I was getting into. But what an amazing ride it’s been. The amount of interest in the podcast has been incredible, and I could not be more appreciative of, or impressed with, the TWiML listener community. Thank you so much. We’re working really hard to be worthy of your attention by continuing to bring you amazing content you can’t find anyplace else.

While we’d usually mention our quote contest now, which was inspired, by the way by TWiML listener Bethann Noble, I’d like to do something special this time around to celebrate our birthday. This week we’d like to announce a very special listener appreciation contest to honor the occasion.

First prize in this contest will be a Bronze Pass to the upcoming O’Reilly AI conference in NYC, valued at $1800. I’ll be there and I’d love to have you there as my guest.

Second prize is a brand new Google Home, powered by AI. You know you can listen to the podcast on these, right?

And every entrant wins a couple of stickers–one for you and one for a friend–and of course, our everlasting love and appreciation!

So how do you enter? Well, it’s easy. Leave us a review on iTunes or a comment here on the show notes page, telling us about your favorite TWiML experience: the things you’ve learned, your favorite moments on the show, etc. It’s that easy! We’ll select the winners on June 1st and announce the winners on the next show. (We’ll have an alternate prize available for 1st place winners who know they can’t attend the O’Reilly event–It will be of similar value as the 2nd place prize, but the details are TBD.)

But seriously, this guy seems super chill and very knowledgeable. I really liked him talking about how the future exists in the gaming sphere, I think it was his closing statement. It’d be neat to develop a horror game AI by hooking somebody up to a polygraph and measuring physiological response or something.

One of the best podcasts so far! I really enjoyed the section where Danny talked about what a great testbed games can be for advancing robotic and autonomous vehicle AI and ML in a no-risk environment. Also found the conversation around “fully autonomous corporations” fascinating. Great interview!